Skepticism

EVENTS

The Primate of All Ireland speaks

I don’t follow the who’s who of the Catholic hierarchy; when I hear the phrase “Primate of All Ireland”, I think of Ussher, the fellow who notoriously calculated the age of the earth using a combination of crude genealogy and numerology. He’s gone down in history for getting it all wrong; so will this one.

While I felt that Ireland as a whole had begun to progress, Cardinal Sean Brady recently issued a statement declaring that any attempt made by the government of Ireland to legislate for abortion due to a judgement made by the European Court of Human Rights would be; “vigorously and comprehensively opposed by many”.

This is nothing new. The Catholic church has always taken a strong stand against human rights.

The picture at the link of the primate in question is priceless: d00d glaring from an opulent throne, wearing a ridiculous hat, and looking just as miserable as every panty-sniffing social conservative I’ve ever met.

This abortion stance is so hypocritical. All this concern for eggs and zygotes but no concern for the born. I read recently that about 21,000 children die every day of malnutrition or malnutrition-related conditions

It would appear that Cardinal Sean Brady has his own problems and conspired / colluded in a cover-up failed to report to police and parents a list of children who were being abused by a notorious paedophile priest.

Well the great fun is there are both a Primate of Ireland (the Archbishop of Dublin) and a Primate of All Ireland (Archbishop of Armagh) and two of each of those, one for the Catholic Church in Ireland and one for the Church of Ireland (Anglican), for a sum total of four primates in Ireland.

Yeah, but it’s a bit pretentious to style one’s self as THE primate of ALL Ireland, innit? He can row out to one of those offshore rock outcrops and declare himself the primate of all of that and it’d be a true claim.

The most convincing argument for preserving a lot of the older Church buildings, bling, and artwork that I’ve heard is historical. e.g. selling the Sistine Chapel to the highest bidder is probably not a good idea if we want to preserve Michelangelo’s work.

But that doesn’t justify the vast majority of money that gets spent on displays of status.

For context, war criminals like this and people like this and this got to keep their title. Because, in terms of severity, rape, murder, and genocide take a back-seat to not obeying the Vatican and not having sex (with adults).

Of course, if that tickles you, Catholic school teachers can be fired for such horrible things as supporting gay marriage, supporting abortion, or getting IVF. In a more “perfect” Catholic world, I’m sure they’d be fired for not tithing the full 10% and for not voting Republican.

Regarding priests and bling. I recall that a few months ago a priest, I think that it might have been Russian Orthodox rather than Catholic, was caught wibbling on about the virtues of poverty while wearing a wristwatch worth several grand. When the blogsphere started drawing attention to the watch, his church produced an image with the watch shopped out and indignantly claimed that malicious bloggers had shopped the watch in to make him look bad. Unfortunately there was a clear reflection of the watch that he wasn’t wearing in the highly polished surface of the table that he was sitting at.

A patriarchal magisterium that held sway in global society for over 2000 yrs has begun to finally realize that they are sliding down the slippery and deadly acute incline of oblivion with no plan B and even less idea of how to implement one if they had it…

The inevitable crumble and irreversible collapsing of what morality ethics and integrity they boasted at the Lateran councils, has been well documented through the ages, but they failed abysmally to recognize that their behavior does not go unnoticed or not commented on in a modern era.
For nearly 1000 yrs they were so used to doing anything they wished or saying anything they wanted as a institution because they found that nothing has the power to persuade like an imagined super deity that dabbled in sadism, that they did not mind lying and bigging the concept up on a public platform.
Besides they found the lies useful and very lucrative.
It had worked so well in the bronze and dark ages, they cannot conceive it ever having been different.
200 yrs behind?…nope more like a 1000yrs at best!

The screw is now well and truly turning as is has done for all previous major mythological tall tales when the strings are revealed,
Then the attendance falls off gradually, no matter what threats and pleadings are made to the ‘faithful’ then they find they are openly challenged and they have no way of combating or even defeating the challenge, then they are shunned…finally bankrupted, it is a slow downward spiral towards irrelevancy and extinction.
We are seeing it right here.

Scotland has challenged them and looks like it will defeat them…now it is Ireland’s turn…they will both find it much easier then they think!
Because nothing trumps humanity and rationality not even fairy tales and threats of make believe Gothic horror!

Not always and entirely against human rights. “Rerum Novarum” and “Caritas in Veritate” are both somewhat supportive of the rights of labor organizing — though with major limits. (The Church had some obvious motives to object to the notion of abolition of private property.) It seems likely a kind of rare “stopped clock” phenomenon, though.

Not always and entirely against human rights. “Rerum Novarum” and “Caritas in Veritate” are both somewhat supportive of the rights of labor organizing — though with major limits. (The Church had some obvious motives to object to the notion of abolition of private property.) It seems likely a kind of rare “stopped clock” phenomenon, though.

Sure, they support certain kinds of property rights. And when that framework is used to oppose other human rights, that’s still being against human rights.

The rights here spoken of, belonging to each individual man, are seen in much stronger light when considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obligations. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that all are at full liberty to follow the counsel of Jesus Christ* as to observing virginity, or to bind themselves by the marriage tie**. No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God’s authority from the beginning: “Increase and multiply.”(3) Hence we have the family, the “society” of a man’s house – a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.

*But not their own or anyone else’s
**But fornicating is a sin, thus it is not a right, because God says so.

That’s not “limited” support for rights. That’s a statement against equality based on gender, orientation, identity, etc. and against the freedom to have sex outside of marriage with a consenting partner. And notice how it’s all propped up by appeals to a god? That’s not what a human right is anyway. If they’re anything at all, they’re what we make them, based on our own authority.

Either a) directly antagonize the Pope, or directly question the Church’s authority without permission or without apology, b) get caught committing some horrible crime that no amount of Public Relations studio magic can ever whitewash, c) volunteer as a sacrificial lamb to be sacrificed as a scapegoat, or d) get caught trying to found a new sect or religion.

I recall when one more more hospital ships floated off the coast of Ireland, just outside Irish territorial waters, to provide abortions for women who were prohibited from getting them in-country. That was years ago. I wonder if they’re still there?

(Possibly apocryphal) I recall an anthropology major friend in college told me the story he heard in class that the first book on lower primates was The sexual behavior of primates. The average person at the time was more familiar with the term for the religious office pronounced “Pree-mah-tay” than the one pronounced “Pry-mate.” According to the story, the book became a runaway best-seller (for its time). We can speculate as to whether the readers could tell the difference. [/snark]

He is called “primate” because he is “first”, from the Latin primus. The term for the bishop came before the term for the ape. Incidentally, the text of Rerum Novarum> is in Latin, and the word translated “man” is homo, which is gender neutral. “Adult male” is vir in Latin. So it is not being sexist.

Incidentally, the text of Rerum Novarum> is in Latin, and the word translated “man” is homo, which is gender neutral. “Adult male” is vir in Latin. So it is not being sexist.

That’s a good point. I would’ve noticed that if I had checked the Latin, but I didn’t bother. My mistake. However, it is still inherently sexist and homophobic to claim the purpose of sex is baby-making.

And if a god is so opposed to humanity that it wants to claim the divine authority to make that the purpose of sex, it hasn’t yet made a reasonable case for that, nor has it forced us all to agree with it against our own best interests. I’m fairly sure that’s not going to happen any time soon either, since gods are far too busy not existing.

The idea that sex is primarily for baby-making is stupid, but not actually sexist or homophobic. It comes from the notion that sex has to be justified; which apparently comes from a fear of pleasure. Think of H. L. Mencken’s definition of puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” So sexual activity is permitted in the Catholic Church if the primary intention of the couple is to make a baby.

Now, there is plenty of homophobia and sexism in the Catholic Church. The argument against women becoming priests is basically that women are inferior to men; Thomas Aquinas states that explicitly. The Vatican says that argument is no longer used, but if anyone really believes that, I want to talk to you about some oceanfront property in Utah. If they did believe that women were equal to men, then they would allow women to be priests.

The Vatican saying that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered” is homophobic, pure and simple.

But the idea of sex being only proper if the couple is trying to make babies is neither homophobic or sexist. It is a stupidity of a different sort, developed by celibate men.

Blame Carolus Linnaeus for that pretentious taxon name. I would have preferred something more neutral, like Manifera (“hand bearers”), from feet being modified for grasping.

It’s worth nothing that an old taxonomic name for nonhuman primates/maniferans was Quadrumana (“four hands”), with us being Bimana (“two hands”). But it’s too late to use Manifera or Quadrumana instead of Primates.